


Solitude Fits Me Like a Glove

by Xanisis



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gansey is dead, M/M, also henry is meme trash pass it on, also the ronan/adam is p much like ronan angsting in the background, also this is really an excuse for my adansey heart to cry, except the toga part (that happened), it's far more adam/henry and adam/gansey than ronan/adam, just a warning, the incredibly angsty slow build adam/henry harvard au that literally no one asked for, there's literally so much angst, this basically ignores all of the raven king, tw: ingrained homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 05:51:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8275141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xanisis/pseuds/Xanisis
Summary: It was, Adam thought, as if he had been living in a world of black and white and Henry, jarringly, was like a sudden splash of over-saturated color, a rush as potent as any drug.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Caiternate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caiternate/gifts).



The first thought that Adam had upon arriving on Harvard’s campus was that it was probably the oldest place he had ever been. Age was a mark of the rich. Adam had grown up with plastic coverings on all the furniture, sweat slicked skin sticking to the surface. Special occasions were celebrations at the Denny’s off the highway, ten-year-old wallpaper peeling in the corners, mold growing in flower shaped blotches on the ceiling. The oldest place he had been before Aglionby was Jenny Salling’s house, a decrepit 20s era brownstone. Nothing from Adam’s world had been made to last. 

Gansey, who had grown up in Virginian plantation houses, whose family had vacationed in Paris and Rome, who had felt just as at home in the ruins of ancient empires as he had sitting on the floor of Monmouth Manufacturing, Gansey, belonged in places like this.

Probably, it was wrong of Adam to feel envious of the dead. 

 

.

 

“You’re actually going?” Ronan had asked the day before move in as Adam had packed his small collection of belongings into an abandoned set of cardboard boxes he’d found in the recycling outside St. Agnes.

It was the first display of emotion Adam could remember him exhibiting since Gansey died. 

“Of course I’m going,” Adam had said. All of his belongings barely fit in two boxes. “Why wouldn’t I?” 

Ronan’s face had been like stone, which had given Adam a fierce, vicious kind of pleasure. It had reminded him of two years ago and the brooding, angry way in which Ronan had taken up space. Adam hated this new, sad Ronan who moped around his farm with a relentless kind of melancholy. 

“It hasn’t even been two months, Adam,” Ronan had said. “I just thought you’d wait longer before gallivanting off into your new life.”

“Life didn’t stop just because Gansey is-” It had felt harder than he had thought to say the word out loud.

“Dead,” Ronan had said. The word didn’t quite fit in his mouth.

The air had felt charged and loaded. Adam had wondered if it was because two weeks previously Ronan had kissed him, messy and hesitant and all kinds of sad, or if it was just the aftermath of Gansey’s death, like they had all been a house of cards and removing the bottom layer had sent them crumbling. 

“Sometimes it feels like you don’t even remember him,” Ronan had said finally. The anger had gone and Adam had wished, desperately, for it to come back. He would so prefer screaming. Even for Gansey, he hadn’t been able to manage these sort of soul bearing confrontations. It seemed as if he was still disappointing the other boy, even in death. 

“I can’t stay,” Adam had said, after too long, after Ronan had already looked away. “I just- I can’t stay here a second longer.”

 

.

 

The campus was bustling with activity, even early in the morning, and the mad dash of people made Adam feel even more confused than if it had been barren. Already, sweat was dripping down his neck, plastering his hair to his head. He ran a hand through it and wished, suddenly, for his Aglionby blazer. Here, in last years slacks and a faded polo he had picked up at Goodwill at the beginning of the summer, he felt thoroughly disassembled. 

It will be fine, he told himself. No one is looking at you. It will be fine. 

He wondered if the words would be easier to believe coming out of Gansey’s mouth, if Gansey had been here with him, toting a bag of his own, greeting everyone that they came across, old Country Club buddies of his dad’s or people that he had met on his travels. Probably not, he decided. But it would have been nice to hear it even so. 

 

.

 

He passed his dorm building three times before a girl in a t-shirt brightly declaring “MOVE IN DAY 2016” finally took pity on him and gave him directions. He flushed red with embarrassment, but she didn’t seem to notice, just gave him a map and an offer to get someone to help with the rest of his bags. 

“My parents have them,” he said, not sure why he felt the need to lie. “They’re just parking the car.”

“Okay!” she said. Her hair had pretty hints of red in it. “Well you can go ahead and check in while you’re waiting for them.”

“Thanks,” he said, ducking his head. Less than an hour on campus and he was already a liar. The worst part though, was how much he wished that it was true. 

 

.

 

He hadn’t told his parents that he had gotten into Harvard, though Gansey had wanted him to.

“They’re still your parents,” he had said, as if that had settled the matter.

“Not as far as I’m concerned,” he’d said.

Gansey had opened his mouth to respond, but Adam had cut him off.

“I’m eighteen, Gansey,” Adam had said. “I can take care of everything on my own, alright?”

Gansey had gotten the look in his eyes that Adam had always hated, a strange mix of pity and such blinding affection that Adam had felt like he had to look away. He had studied the back of the Raisin Bran box Gansey was molding into a church instead.

“You shouldn’t have to,” Gansey said, finally, after Adam had thought they had already dropped it, and Adam found he didn’t have a response. 

 

.

 

“So you’re the infamous Adam Parrish,” his roommate’s mom said as soon as he entered the room.

She had the sort of airbrushed quality Adam had always associated with money. He wondered if that was something you had to be born with or if you could learn it, like riding a bicycle. 

“Don’t mind her, she’s just very into Facebook,” his father said.

He too, had that slightly unreal quality, like watching a sitcom come to life. This isn’t how real people behaved, Adam thought surreally. 

“A little too into it,” Tyler said. “She wanted to like find your parents and like exchange baby pictures or something like that.” 

Adam wondered if this is what all the people who went to Harvard looked like, like they had just stepped out of a brochure for the school, perfectly tousled hair and tennis shoulders, the right mix of sunny and studious. He reminded Adam of a hero in a novel. He reminded Adam of Gansey, without any of his darkness and his moods and his late night smiles and ruffled hair, his glasses twisted and broken, blood on the--

“We were beginning to think you didn’t exist,” his mother said, giving him a tentative smile, probably wondering why he was just standing in the doorway, mute, with a duffle slung over his shoulder and an unwieldy box in his hands. 

“Just not technologically inclined I guess,” he said, the tone of his voice all wrong. He didn’t know how to say that he had to work an extra shift a week to pay for the phone that he did have, awkward and out of date, and even then, sending even a simple text had led to such a mess of anxiety over the cost that he had basically decided not to bother with it. Gansey, of course, had offered to pay for a better phone. He had tried to use the excuse that it would be more convenient for him if Adam was able to more easily be reached, but Adam had put his foot down. He didn’t need Gansey’s help. He didn’t need-

“Well I think that’s healthy in a young man,” Tyler’s father said, “This one here can’t seem to stay off his phone.” 

He gave Tyler a playful shove and Tyler laughed. Adam wasn’t behaving in a normal way. He should put down the box. Tyler’s mother gave him an anxious look.

“Are your parents coming with the rest of your stuff, honey?” she asked. 

Adam wondered if he should just repeat the lie he had told the girl outside, but there was always the possibility that they would wait around to see if he was telling the truth. Everything already felt like a convoluted web. This was supposed to be easier.

“My parents are…” The box was starting to feel heavy. He could feel his hands leaving sweat prints on the cardboard. “It’s just me,” he said finally.

They were all looking at him. Adam wished they would stop.

“It’s just me,” he repeated.

 

.

 

It had been Blue that had taken Adam college shopping. She had showed up outside of St. Agnes a week before he had to leave in Calla’s beaten down, orange minivan, which she’d somehow managed to make look infinitely cool. Others would have looked childish in the ridiculous vehicle, but she’d come across as oddly hip, a quality, strangely, that she and Gansey had shared, one that Adam feared he would never have access to. 

He had expected her to seem, for some reason, wildly different, as if in the space of time since Gansey’s death she would be radically changed in some way, but she looked the same. A little older, perhaps, and sadder, but still, to the core, Blue.

“Get in loser, we’re going shopping,” she’d said, and Adam had tried to laugh, but the sound had come out stilted and awkward.

“I don’t need you to do this,” he’d said.

She’d looked at him for a long time. Her eyes had been covered by a pair of gigantic cat sunglasses that’d been an alarming shade of purple and he hadn’t been able to see her eyes behind them, just a reflection of his own self, small and sweat-stained. 

“Adam,” she’d said, finally. “Get in the car.”

And he had. 

 

.

 

At first, Adam hadn’t really understood Gansey’s obsession with Glendower. What could this boy, this boy who had everything at his fingertips, want to ask of the ancient king? What did Richard Campbell Gansey III know of hunger? 

Later, he’d realized that Gansey, in a way not unsimilar to Adam himself, had a longing within him for things to be beautiful, for things to be more than they were, it was just that he’d started with what Adam already wanted. And it was near the end of his life, when they’d already found Cabeswater, and the Greywarren, and were so swamped in magic that it had made Adam’s head spin, that Adam had realized that it was never going to be enough for Gansey.

“Ugh,” Gansey’d exclaimed one night, a little less than a month before he’d died, collapsing back on the bed.

Adam, for the first time in a long time, had been visiting Monmouth Manufacturing, steadfastly working on his college applications, trying to decide if “therefore” was too pretentious or just the right amount.

“What?” Blue had asked. She’d been napping on Gansey’s bed, and when the boy collapsed next to her had looked up, black hair sticking straight up on her head, adorably rumpled.

Adam had noticed Gansey noticing it and it had made something build in his stomach.

“What?” she’d asked again, poking him with her foot. 

Gansey’d appeared sort of distracted.

“Umm,” he’d said. 

“The tension is killing me,” Ronan’d said, from his place sprawled artfully in the old arm chair in the corner, limbs ridiculously long and pale, his eyes fixed firmly on Adam when he thought Adam was not looking. “Just get a room already.”

“I have a room,” Gansey’d said, indignantly. “I’m just frustrated by the lack of progress on Operation Glendower.”

“Are we calling it an Operation now?” Blue’d asked. She’d looked, in Adam’s opinion, a little bit flushed. She hadn’t been able to look at Gansey.  

“Shouldn’t you be more worried about college apps?” Adam’d said. “Mrs. Droutemeyer mentioned that you missed your meeting with her last week. I think she said something about Aglionby’s star pupil not living up to his full potential. It was very pointed.” 

Gansey’d looked put out, eyebrows drawn down, his face distinctly un-Ganseyish.

“I’m not going to college next year,” he’d said. 

It had been a response that Adam would have expected from Ronan, who had never believed in his potential for anything, but Gansey, star of the crew team, five generation legacy at Harvard University, intensely likable Gansey, not going to college was unthinkable. 

“That’s ridiculous,” Adam’d said. It had made him, for some reason, intensely angry. 

“I made the deal with my parents that I would go to Aglionby, but I never intended to stay in school.”

“And what if we find Glendower next week? What will you do then? Just spend the rest of your life looking for the next ancient Welsh king? What if we never find him?”

Gansey’d had a stubborn set to his mouth that was new, and more aggressive than he generally allowed himself to be. 

“I don’t know,” he’d said. 

“You could do anything you wanted,” Adam’d said. “And you’re throwing your life away, and I don’t want to be part of it anymore.”

He’d stood up suddenly, and the papers on his lap had fallen to the floor, scattering across Gansey’s carefully laid city. Adam had been struck by a wave of self-hatred so intense it was almost staggering. The room had been eerily silent. 

Adam’d made it to the door before looking back. Gansey, where he had been lying on the bed, had looked strangely vulnerable, surrounded by rumpled, white sheets, Blue’s bare foot pressing into his stomach, his eyes wide. 

“Adam,” he’d said. “You’re going to get in.” 

“Gansey,” Adam had said. “You don’t understand anything.”

 

.

 

Adam delved into a routine fairly quickly. He found that it was not that different than being at Aglionby, not really.

He went to class, lecture halls full of bright, rich kids whose eyes glossed over him, who took in his thrifted clothes and his Great Clips haircut and his drawling country accent, and dismissed him.

And when he wasn’t in class, he was at work. At the main library he wandered for hours among the stacks. Sometimes he didn't even shelve the books, just walked up and down the aisles, running his hand along the different covers, fingers skimming all of the out of date colors, mustard and olive and burnt orange. On the weekends, he worked at a coffee shop near campus. It was probably the nicest job he’d ever had, no tire grease or heavy lifting, just endless amounts of hazelnut soy lattes and indie bands over the loud speakers, and it paid well, better than any job he’d worked before. Saturday nights he would make himself a gingerbread latte when he got off his shifts and shuffle back to the dorms to do his homework.

Most nights Tyler was out. The first week, he had invited Adam to a party with him and Adam had gone, a blurry, hazy recollection. He remembered little of it, just the endless parade of faces and the pinpricks of the stars in the sky when he had gone out to lie in a park on his own and the pounding of the bass inside the house, how it had lived in his chest. Tyler hadn’t asked him again. 

Later, it will come to him that he was probably experiencing some form of PTSD, that he was walking around campus every day shell shocked, cut off from the rest of the world, that Cabeswater, with it’s strange magic, had in many ways completely wrecked his brain. But Adam hadn’t thought of it at the time. He’d known that he was sad, but the extent of it, the loss of the ability to properly function, hadn’t really occurred to him. He wouldn’t have known how to ask for help anyway. And no one, even those with their brains mired in abnormal psych, had thought to ask. 

 

.

 

“Parrish, mah man!”

Adam looked up in bleary, dazed surprise to see Henry Chang descending on his library table. He had almost fallen asleep sitting up, political theory swimming in front of his eyelids, and the appearance of the other boy felt completely surreal. 

“I’d almost forgotten you went here,” Henry said, leaning against the library table.

Adam had grown so used to Henry in Aglionby uniform that seeing him here, in brightly patterned shorts and a muscle tee, hair coiffed to ridiculous perfection, was distracting. 

“Schumaker too,” Henry said, seemingly unperturbed by Adam’s lack of response. “We should like totally do an Aglionby meet up, get all the old gang back together and shit. You know Milo? And Frank Zuller? The Frankster! Man that guy gets up to some crazy ass shit, you wouldn’t believe. They’re a couple of years older, but I’m sure they’d love to set some Agly freshies on the right path. They can get you into the right parties, if you know what I mean, ehh Parrish?”

Adam’s head was spinning. 

Henry’s phone went off, a loud distracting mamba. The girl sitting next to Adam shot him a glare which Henry happily ignored.

“One sec,” he said and then picked it up, jogging off into the stacks. 

Adam looked back down at his textbook (he still couldn’t quite believe that it had cost two hundred dollars, his hand had twitched so hard when he’d handed over his debit card that he’d almost dropped it), but the words did not make any more sense than they had five minutes before.

“Okay man,” Henry said, jogging back. The girl was glaring at him again, but there was also an edge to her appraisal as if she was sizing him up, probably, Adam thought, trying to determine if he was gay or not. Henry had a way of drawing eyes like that. “I’ve gotta go. But put your number in my phone, I’ll ring you up, we’ll go out this weekend, k?” 

Adam still hadn’t said a word, but he took the phone. It felt ridiculously oversized in his hands, a glaringly pink color and covered with stickers that said things like “yess bitch!” and “DOFH”   and “hott”. The background on the phone was a picture of Henry’s gang at school, non-Asian Henry and Preston Miller and Davis Larson, and Adam saw with no small amount of surprise, Blue and Gansey, Henry’s arms thrown around the two of them, clutching them close. Gansey, true to form, looked awkward and slightly out of place, a little bit too tall for Henry’s arm to comfortably go around him, but his smile was genuine and purely Gansey. It was the first time Adam had looked at a picture of Gansey in months, not since the funeral, where Gansey’s parents had plastered pictures of Presidential Gansey everywhere, all of his smiles bright and unreal. Adam found his fingers frozen over the screen. He hadn’t even opened the contacts app.

“It’s a good picture, yeah?” Henry asked and when Adam looked up at him, his eyes were soft. 

“Yeah,” Adam said. “It’s a good picture.”

“I’ll call you,” Henry said, taking the phone back, though Adam hadn’t put his number in. “It’ll be fun. Parrish and Cheng on the town, wrecking dick or pussy or whatever it is you’re into these days.” 

“This is a library,” the girl next to Adam said. 

Henry laughed. It was, Adam thought, as if he had been living in a world of black and white and Henry, jarringly, was like a sudden splash of over-saturated color, a rush as potent as any drug. 

“See you Friday, Parrish,” he said, and then he was gone. 

 

.

 

Adam hadn’t had a full nights sleep in almost six months. Before, it had been because of Cabeswater pressing in on his brain, constantly calling to him. Cabeswater had left him alone for months, though. He had paid his due. Now, it was just the dreams. 

“Adam,” Gansey said. 

They were walking the halls of Aglionby, though it was night and the school was empty, the corridor eerie and strangely dark, even though the bright fluorescents were on. 

“Are you ready for the American Democracy test?” he asked. His hand was on Adam’s arm, that felt important.

“Don’t act like you’ve been studying,” Adam said. He felt lighter than he had in months. He had missed Gansey. “I know you, you’re just going to look over your notes once the night before and you’ll probably do better than I will.”

“Nobody’s better than you,” Gansey said, affectionately, his hand going to cup Adam’s cheek. 

His eyes were very green, and his lips, parted slightly, were ridiculously inviting. Adam thought, for a moment, that they were going to meet his, but before they could, Gansey doubled over.

“Gansey,” he said. “Gansey, are you alright?” 

He turned and the other boy was gone. 

Blue stood at the end of the hallway, water dripping from her skirt onto the tiled floor. She looked small and out of place, strangely young, like a child. She was wearing Gansey’s sweater, the yellow ludicrously bright against her dark skin. 

“Blue?” he asked.

“He’s dead,” she said. “Gansey’s dead.”

And Adam looked down and his hands were covered in blood.

He woke up crying. 

 

.

  
  


Adam’s phone rung in his Friday afternoon discussion lecture. The sound was so foreign that it took him a moment to realize that it was his phone going off. 

“Aren’t you going to get that?” the guy next to him asked.

Adam flushed a dark red and dug into his messenger bag. The phone was all the way at the bottom and the ringing was insistent and grating.

“Sorry,” he said, and the class continued. 

He had ten missed calls when he got out of class, all from an unknown Virginia number. As he was holding it, it started ringing again, buzzing silently in his hand. Adam hadn’t realized how annoying the phone was.

“Hello?” he said.

“Parrish!” 

“I didn’t give you my number,” Adam said. He remembered that he hadn’t. Henry had taken the phone back before he could.

“Huh?” Henry asked.

Adam didn’t bother repeating.

“Anyway, what dorm are you in? I’ll swing by and pick you up tonight. We’re going on the tooooown.” 

“Henry, I’m not sure-”

“Shumaker can’t make it, but I talked to Zuller and he said that…” 

Henry began to prattle on, but Adam zoned him out. The air was just beginning to turn crisp and clear and the leaves were slowly losing their color. The campus itself was so picturesque it made Adam’s chest hurt, like he was constantly walking around in a novel where he wasn’t even the protagonist, like he was always out of place.

“Parrish? Did you hear me? Parrish? 10pm. Outside what’d you say again? Gray? Hildman?”

“Hildman,” Adam said, finally. It felt like a concession.

“Fab,” Henry said, “I’ll see you then. We’re getting it on!” 

 

.

 

When Adam was eight-years-old, his father broke his collarbone. At the time, his father had been eight beers in (Adam learned at a young age to count them. Three was safe, but four was dicey, and any more than six meant that he should hide in his room until morning), and his face had looked like something fearsome. 

They hadn't taken Adam to the hospital that night, hadn’t, in fact, until the next day, when his teacher at school had noticed the swelling, bright purple under his shirt. He’d vowed then, as he’d sat alone in the hospital listening to the beeping of the monitors, that he was never going to drink, he couldn’t imagine ever wanting to. 

The night that Gansey died, he got drunk for the first time, so drunk that he threw up in the shower, heaving and heaving until he thought he might hack up blood, so drunk that he had let Ronan card his hands through his hair, had let him hold him until they’d fallen asleep, all wrapped up in each other. That had been a mistake, Adam knew now. 

His first month at Harvard, he went out only a couple of times. He hadn’t been able to tell if the haze of alcohol made things better or worse, just knew that it made his limbs looser in a way that he wasn’t sure he enjoyed, and made the night skip by, a record slightly out of sync.

 

.

 

Henry was late, which in retrospect, was not that surprising. The weather was just starting to turn cold and Adam sat shivering on Hildman’s steps, fingers stuck in his armpits, debating whether or not he should just go back inside and grab a jacket, when Henry finally showed up. There was a girl clinging to his arm, laughing, pretty, in an alternative kind of way, her lipstick very dark and her blouse cut recklessly low. In a weird way, she reminded Adam a little bit of Blue, if Blue was all different. 

“Parrish!” Henry cried. Adam wondered if they had already started drinking. “Dude, it’s like you’re a pear, but like only like a little bit. Like Pear-ish, get it?”

The girl laughed, leaning close into Henry, hand grasping him to her. It made Adam wonder, for the first time, if Henry was not actually gay, though he’d always assumed that he was.

“Yeah, I got it,” he said. 

“Cheer up, Parrish,” Henry said, slinging his free arm around Adam’s shoulder. The other boy smelled strongly of cologne, but in a way that was strangely pleasant, comforting almost, though Adam wouldn’t have expected it to be. Adam wondered if there was a polite way to ask him to let go. “Tonight, my friend, is going down in the history books.”

“Oooooh, yeah,” the girl said.  “We should take a picture, the three of us.”

“Yas!” Henry exclaimed, letting go of the two of them and snagging a random passerby with a cry of,“Take a picture of me and my squad!”  

It was enough activity that Adam’s head was spinning and the night had barely even begun.

“Okay so what vibe are we going for?” the girl asked, wrapping her arm around Adam. 

“Fierce, Kathleen,” Henry said, joining Adam on the other side. “The vibe is always fierce.” 

On either side of him, the girl, Kathleen, and Henry started posing, and Adam, not knowing what to do, just stood there, glad, in a vague sort of way, that they weren’t making him smile.

“Perf,” Henry said, grabbing the phone back from the guy who had taken the photo. “Kathleen, our squad is so hot. The fierce levels are too high. Parrish, come look at this. Isn’t he a damn fine specimen, Kathleen?”

Kathleen laughed. “Your friend is hot, Cheng.” 

She smiled at him slyly, and Adam shivered. Too much, he thought. This is too much.

Henry held out the phone to Adam. The picture didn’t look like anything Adam had ever been a part of, too edgy and posed, like a fashion editorial, Henry and Kathleen, flanking him on either side with their heads tilted at ridiculous, seductive angles, Adam the awkward one in between, face blank and still, but he didn’t, Adam had to admit, look as out of place as he’d imagined. 

“Tonight is the night, my friends,” Henry said, pulling them both close to him.

Adam wondered if this was just Henry’s MO, touching, all the time. It made him feel kind of dizzy. 

Henry led them to an off-campus house, already, even at that early hour of the night, overflowing with people. Everything was darkly lit, with the pulse of technicolor lights casting an eerie glow over everyone, making them appear foreign and strange, and the bass reverberating from the basement, causing everyone to move subtly along with the beat. Henry pressed a red solo cup into Adam’s hand.

“You look like you could seriously use this, Parrish,” he said, downing his own with a smile.

Adam took the drink and once he had finished it and the next one, he let Kathleen take his hand and lead him down the stairs. In the basement a mess of people were dancing, thrashing along to the beat. Adam had never thought of himself as a dancer. He’d never liked the idea of losing control, of letting people see him that loose and unrefined, but he let Kathleen and Henry pull him onto the floor, because he didn’t feel like fighting, and when they started dancing, he let himself get carried along with the beat. At a certain point, he felt arms snake around him, one resting on his hip, the other on his stomach. He turned in surprise to see Henry behind him, face a splattering of red and blue light, and Adam, for reasons he couldn’t quite fathom, let Henry’s hands guide him into moving with the other boy, let Henry’s body press into his. Kathleen, on the other side of him, moved closer as well, and then they were all dancing, a crazed blur of limbs and roiling, tumultuous motion. Adam felt, for the first time in a long time, acutely alive, as if every part of his body was screaming. After the blur of the last three months, it felt something like heaven, like pure rush. The last time Adam could remember feeling this much was when the knife entered Gansey’s body. 

There were lips on Adam’s neck, kissing the skin there. Maybe Adam should’ve moved away from Henry, but it felt good, so he found himself leaning back instead, and feeling the stretch of Henry’s body against his. Kathleen’s hand touched his face. Her nails were long and dark and Adam could imagine how the scratches from them would feel on his skin, deep and red, and her nail touched his lip, and she leant up and kissed him, and Adam found himself kissing her back. 

Adam remembered only pieces after that. The thud of the bass in his chest. The way Kathleen had tasted, like lemon vodka and lipstick. The rush of cold night air on his face, like he was coming alive. Henry next to him, an arm slung over his shoulder, saying, “This is the life, isn't it? The Harvard life™,” and laughing and Adam laughing too. Adam’s face in the bathroom of his dorm mirror, smeared with purple, features slightly off kilter and surprising. Smiling, for the first time in months and meaning it. Henry, dancing, his hand on Adam's hip.

 

.

 

When Adam went on his break at work the next day, he had ten new messages. 

parrish i’m trying to post the squad pic and i can't find your insta 

omg parrish where is it????

do you not have one?!?! where is your insta presence parrish???

parrish your too beautiful not to be on the gram this is serious 

i'm making you one don't argue w me

what's your password? 

parrish i'm hacking your facebook 

ok so i've sent you the link to your new insta

i know you're not up to the technology and stuff but i will update it regularly bc the world deserves your face 

i’m glad you came out last night btw 

Adam bit his lip, scrolling through the messages again. He had sort of thought last night had been a one time thing. He and Henry actually being friends felt unimaginable. Henry, he felt, in a way similar to Gansey, was larger than life, and it made little to no sense that he'd want to be around Adam. 

When he got home, though, he checked his email and saw that, sure enough, he had an e-mail from henry69@harvard.edu. The link opened to the instagram website and Adam saw that Henry had, in fact, created an account for him. His description was just a pear emoji, which made him snort. Henry had already posted a picture, one from the night before that Adam hadn't remembered him taking. In it Adam was standing under a streetlight, looking at the camera with hazy eyes. Adam closed the website quickly and shut the laptop.

None of it meant anything, he told himself. 

 

.

 

“Dude you look wrecked,” Tyler said, flopping down into the bed across from Adam. Normally their social interactions consisted of cursory hellos when they passed each other on campus, so the direct address felt out of character. 

“What?” Adam said, eloquently. 

“Your neck,” Tyler said, gesturing. “Good weekend?” 

Adam had woken up Saturday morning with a neck ringed purple and red. Two days later and the marks stayed stubbornly in place.

“Oh, right. Yeah, I guess.”

This was probably when they were supposed to be bonding, Adam thought. 

“So I didn't know you were friends with Cheng,” Tyler said. 

“You know Henry?” Adam asked. 

Tyler laughed. “Yeah, I mean, who doesn't?” 

“Right,” Adam said. “Well we're not good friends or anything.”

 

.

 

“Parrish!” Adam heard. He looked up from the cash register and saw Henry, bedecked in a brightly colored beanie and a goofy grin.

It had been a week since the “incident” as Adam now dubbed it, and he had received several more texts from Henry (one of which just read “bananas are going extinct??? discuss”), but he hadn’t replied to any of them, and he hadn’t decided what he was going to do. 

“What can I get you?” Adam asked. He was aware that the majority of the cafe’s clientele were Harvard students, but it was easier to pretend that they weren’t when he didn’t know any of them. Serving people he knew left a bitter taste in his mouth. 

“Let’s go out again this weekend,” Henry said.

Adam grimaced.

“Or not,” Henry said. His head was tilted at an odd angle, appraising Adam. It made Adam uncomfortable. For all his flamboyance, Adam had the sense that Henry was much more perceptive than he let on. “Come over to my dorm, we can hang, watch a movie or something. It’ll be chill.”

It sounded tiring. Adam shrugged.

“I can invite Kathleen if you want,” Henry said, watching him closely. Adam wanted to ask him to stop. “You two seemed to get along.” 

The girl behind Henry in line tapped him on the shoulder. “If you’re not going to order can you just like move along. Please.” 

“Right, right,” Henry said. “I’ll have a caramel macchiato with an extra shot of espresso and whatever she’s getting.” He winked. “Wouldn’t want to give you a bad rep, Parrish.”

He handed Adam his card without asking for the amount and wandered over to the end of the bar to wait for his drink. Adam wondered what it was like to just do that, not to think about how much the latte cost or even what the girl was going to get and whether that would fit in the budget for the week or the month or the year, just to hand it over. He wanted that with a longing so fierce it almost made it hard to function.  

He went and handed Henry his card and his latte when it was done. 

“Here,” Adam said, shoving it at him.

“Adam,” Henry said, not taking it. “Last weekend doesn’t have to be a deal, okay? We had fun, right?” 

“I’m not making it a deal,” Adam said, aware, in a vague sort of way, that he was. 

“Okay,” Henry said, drawing out the vowel. “Look, I know it’s not the same, but I’m sad about Gansey too. We weren’t close like you were, but I liked him a lot.” 

“I have to get back to work,” Adam said. His jaw felt tight. “I’ll see you around, Henry.”

“Adam,” Henry said. “Come on.”

“Here’s your latte,” he said, and then walked away.

 

.

 

Adam’s phone was never that active. He went hours sometimes without checking it. The day that Henry came to coffee shop it went off every thirty minutes, an irritating and continuous buzz. He kept telling himself not to look at it, but every five minutes he would pick up the phone again, scrolling through the messages.

look parrish i’m sorry if i’ve made you uncomfortable :/

that wasn’t my intention at all

parrish i think your cute and i like you but if it’s too soon after everything with gansey i get it

i just like you ok?

fuck i’m sorry

i’m being too much

like just tell me to shut up

parrish fuck i know this is your number could you just say something?

it wouldn’t have to mean anything

fuck sorry i’m just going to stop okay? 

Adam tapped the phone against his leg so hard he wondered if it would bruise. 

if it’s too soon after everything with gansey

everything with gansey

gansey

 

.

 

Adam still remembered the first time that he had seen Gansey. It had been from across the quad that first semester at Aglionby, when Gansey was still engulfed in the crew mania, and he seemed to stand in for everything that Adam had always wanted, pretty skin and pretty hair and pretty smile that made people take notice. 

Adam Parrish saw Richard Campbell Gansey III for the first time and he had ached. 

A week later Adam had had a dream where the other boy had dropped to his knees in front of him, looked at him with those ridiculous eyes, and dragged Adam’s zipper down with his teeth. 

Adam had woken up from the dream and slammed his hand against the bedframe hard enough that he broke skin.

He hadn’t known Gansey, then, of course. He had just been a boy who had been beautiful and unattainable with a mouth that had made Adam weak-kneed. Afterwards, when he and Gansey become friends, actual friends, sometimes that fact still made Adam’s head spin, he’d thought the dreams would stop. But a month into their friendship, Adam had another dream, one where Gansey had pressed facts about Glendower into the skin of Adam’s stomach and Adam had woken hard and so angry that he almost couldn’t breathe with it. 

Nothing had happened with Gansey.

Except that he’d killed him.

Except that. 

Except. 

 

.

 

There was banging on the door. Adam took out his headphones. It was Saturday night and the dorm was practically empty, all of the students filtering out amongst campus, going to frat parties and dorm hangouts. Adam had even heard mention in his Logic class that there was going to be a toga party. Girls in skimpy bedsheets flitted past his window regularly, running and giggling.

Adam opened the door and Henry was standing on the other side. He looked less put together than he normally did, his hair coiffed less high, his clothes more drab. 

“Hi,” he said.

“Hey,” Adam said.

“Okay,” he started, his words tumbling out in a rush. “So like please let me know if I’m totally just being a stalker and I’ll leave you alone, I promise, but like I’m seriously worried about you Parrish. Like I know you’ve always had this like I don’t care what people think attitude”- Adam wondered for a moment if that was how people had seen him, how almost funny that was- “but like this,” here he gestured to Adam, “this isn’t normal, Parrish. And I’m worried, so can I come in? I brought movies. And vodka.”

He looked incredibly earnest, something Adam couldn’t decide if he found endearing or not. It reminded him of Gansey.

“Okay,” he said, finally.

“Okay?” Henry asked. His whole face was changing. “Cool, okay. Let’s do this.”

Adam opened the door for him, suddenly conscious of how barren and monklike his section of the room was, the bedsheets tucked in tight, the walls devoid of any type of decoration.

Henry flopped down on the bed immediately, ruffling the cheap sheets. Adam winced. 

“Dude, what?” he asked, gesturing to Adam’s laptop.

Ronan had dreamed it for him when he’d found out that he got into Harvard.

“Just take it,” he’d said, thrusting it into Adam’s hands. 

It looked almost identical to the fancy macbooks that Adam had been sure all of his peers would have that he could never, never afford, but instead of an apple on the front of it, there was a pear. It was too much for a gift, a little piece of Ronan tucked away in his dorm, but he’d needed it, more than Adam wanted to need anything. 

“That’s dope as fuck,” Henry said.

“Ronan gave it to me,” Adam said, shutting it on the desk, wishing there was some way to squirrel it away from Henry’s sight.

Henry, however, had already moved on, unloading the spoils in his backpack onto the bed. A bottle of Takka, a liter of sprite, a laptop, and a huge pile of DVDs ( _ Hoodwinked _ ,  _ Terminator _ , all of the  _ Star Wars _ ,  _ The Princess Bride, _ and  _ Gone Girl _ ).

“I wasn’t sure what the mood was,” Henry said. “And I sort of have a movie thing. I know these are sort of basic, but like idk, I thought they were classics.”

“I haven’t seen any of them,” Adam said. 

“Dude, what the fuck? You haven’t seen Star Wars? Who the fuck raised you?”

Adam wondered if Henry knew where he grew up.

“Anyway, that’s def what we’re doing tonight. I’m going to enjoy educating you, my friend. Hasn’t seen Star Wars. Honestly.” 

Adam didn’t even have cups in his room, but Henry just dumped out the water in his water bottle and filled it with sprite and vodka, declaring loudly that, “at least it was better than swigging from the bottle.” Adam found his presence sort of overwhelming, but he liked that Henry didn’t ask anything of him but to be there. Henry, to Adam, felt like life, pure and unrefined and addicting, and he wasn’t quite sure how to handle it.

Henry had added rules to an elaborate drinking game, something he claimed to have refined around his sophomore year of high school, and midway through the first movie Adam was more than a little buzzed. 

Sometimes around the time Luke and Han broke into the prison cell, Henry’s hand found it’s way to Adam’s knee, warm and heavy. Adam was acutely aware of each finger, and he didn’t know if he wanted Henry to move it or not.

“This okay?” Henry asked. 

Leia and Han were arguing. Adam leaned over and kissed Henry. Henry kissed him back.

 

.

 

Adam woke the next morning to a splitting headache and Henry Cheng in his bed. Henry, unsurprisingly, was a cuddler, his arm wrapped snug around Adam, his body like a heater. Adam disentangled himself, tugging on a shirt, and looking back at the bed, where Henry was splayed. 

What was he doing? he wondered.

 

.

 

Adam hadn’t known that faggot was a bad word until he entered high school, and even then, it was brandished about at Aglionby so freely that he hadn’t really found it that offensive. It was Ronan, who’d reacted to the word with snarled teeth and a wicked glint in his eyes, and Gansey, who had shielded Ronan with a protectiveness that had surprised Adam, that had caused himself to examine it.  

Even then, he hadn’t allowed himself to think of the possibility of him being gay. He liked girls. And if sometimes he dreamed about Gansey on his knees that was a different story altogether. 

 

.

 

Adam called Blue once he got outside. He’d only talked to her a handful of times since they’d both left for college, enough to know that the people at community college were “just as dumb as [she’d] expected” and honestly, he, Adam, “should be glad that he got out of Henrietta while he could”. 

“Adam!” Blue said when he answered the phone. “You promised you’d call me last week.”

“Right,” Adam said. “Sorry.”

“I met a girl,” she said. “Her name is Laura and she’s in my French class and she’s actually not the worst.”

Adam didn’t quite know what the correct response is. He still didn’t know if he was enough over Blue that he could hear about new potential interests. Gansey had been bad enough.

The line was quiet for a minute.

“How are you doing?” she asked, finally. “I’ve been thinking about you.”

Adam thought about saying,  _ I just slept with Henry Cheng _ , but instead he just said, “I’m alright.”

Blue hummed on the other end. He wasn’t being convincing.

“I’ve been spending some time with Henry,” he said.

“Henry, like Henry Henry?” she asked. 

“Yes?” he said.

“Oh,” she said. Adam was having a hard time reading her tone. “That’s cool. How is he?”

Adam thought about the way that Henry kissed, eyes closed, mouth soft. 

“He’s good, I guess,” he said. “Look, Blue, I got to go.”

“Okay,” she said. He had probably hurt her feelings again. Since the beginning, he couldn’t seem to stop doing that. “The offer still stands for Thanksgiving. You know you’re always welcome here.”

Adam hadn’t been back to Fox Way since they’d gone  _ that  _ night with Gansey, when they’d thought they were on their way to find Glendower. Adam had felt ill, his head pounding, his hands shaking. He hadn’t known why at the time. Gansey had looked just as fevered, pale skin flushed red, eyes too bright. Adam had thought that maybe he was excited too. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t known. 

“Thanks,” he said, thinking that there was no way he was going to go back to Henrietta if he could help it. His plans for Thanksgiving currently involved hiding in his dorm for the five day break and eating ramen.

“I miss you,” Blue said, after a long time. “I miss all of us.”

“Me too,” Adam said, and meant it. It wasn’t just Gansey that had died that night, not really.

“Have you talked to Ronan?” she asked.

“No.”

“He misses you too,” she said. “He’s just stubborn. Not as stubborn as you, but still.” 

“I have to go,” Adam repeated.

“Okay,” she said. She sounded disappointed. “Adam-”

Adam hung up.

 

.

 

Henry was awake and dressed when Adam got back to the room, sitting on his bed.

“Hey,” he said, when Adam came back in. “I wasn’t sure if this was a thing where you wanted me to leave or if you wanted to go get breakfast or something.”

“I have a lot of work to do,” he said. He was impressed that his voice sounded so even, he hadn’t been sure if he was going to be able to manage it. 

“Okay,” Henry said. “Well, like last night was fun? Sorry, I’m having trouble getting a read on you.” 

“It was fun,” Adam repeated. “We should do it again sometime.”

“The sex?” Henry asked. His brow was furrowed. Adam wondered how much it would take to show him that he wasn’t whoever Henry thought he was. “Or did you want to date? Because like I’d like to take you out, if you wanted.”

“I’m not gay,” Adam said. 

Henry’s face contorted further, though Adam hadn’t thought that was possible. 

“Oh my god, you’re in the closet. I didn’t know. I thought you and Gansey were… Holy fuck, sorry. I wouldn’t have gone after you so hard if I’d thought you were in the closet. The closet, fuck Parrish.” 

“I’m not in the closet. I’m just not gay.”

“Parrish, we had sex, I think that makes you at least not straight.”

“I didn’t have a thing with Gansey,” he said.

“Okay,” Henry said.

Adam thought about saying,  _ I just killed him _ , but thought better of it. 

“It’s okay to be sad that he’s dead,” Henry said. “Even if you weren’t dating.” 

“You don’t know anything about it,” Adam said. 

“Adam--”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Adam said. 

Henry looked distinctly not Henry, the left side of his hair flattened, his face strangely still and sad.

“Okay,” he said. “Fuck Adam, it’s just like you don’t want to let anyone care about you.”

“Okay,” Adam said. He wondered if Henry would leave soon. 

“Okay,” Henry said, and it sounded defeated. He started gathering his stuff, the spread of dvds, the half-empty bottle of vodka. Adam watched him do it in silence.

He didn’t say sorry.

 

.

 

“Adam, what are you doing?” Gansey had said, voice breathless in surprise.

His eyelashes had been very long and there had been a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. Adam had wanted to press kisses to each one, had wanted to bite into the skin of Gansey’s neck and draw blood, wanted, wanted, wanted so much the he had almost pulsed with it. 

Adam’s hand on the knife had been slippery with rain. He had taken it from Blue’s kitchen hours before, tucking it into the band of his waistband, feeling the cold metal against his skin. He hadn’t known what is was for, he had just known that he’d needed it, needed it with a desperation that bordered on psychotic.

“Oh,” Gansey had said. Adam had pressed the tip of the knife to Gansey’s chest. He had been able to feel the other boys heartbeat, a steady pound, and he had wondered if that had been Cabeswater or just the adrenaline. “I was never meant to find him, was I?”

“No,” Adam had said, or maybe it was just Cabeswater using his lips. 

“Okay,” Gansey had said. There had been tears in his eyes, but his face had been strangely anxious. “Adam, I know you’re in there and I want you to promise me something, okay? Promise me--” and Adam had plunged the knife down.

 

.

 

Several weeks passed without incident, October fading into November. Adam had expected that he would see Henry at the coffee shop someday, maybe run into him in the halls, but he didn’t. He thought maybe Henry was avoiding him. 

The last he’d heard from Henry had been the day after the incident when he’d texted him. 

i feel like i should apologize but i dont know for what and mainly im just sort of mad but i dont know why or maybe i  do idk. you do you adam but like i do have feelings too something to think about

Adam hadn’t known what to say in response, so he hadn’t said anything.

 

.

 

Adam’s phone rang as he was heading to the dining hall. 

“Hey,” Blue said, when he answered. “So I hope this isn’t weird, but I’m sort of here?”

“Here as in…?”

“As in Harvard yeah,” Blue said. Adam stopped walking. “It was just it’s Thanksgiving and I knew you weren’t going to come back to Henrietta, but like I got really sad thinking of you being here alone and like maybe you’re not alone, idk, but I wanted to spend the holiday with you, I hope that’s okay.”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “Yeah, where are you?”

 

.

 

Last Thanksgiving, Adam, Ronan, and Gansey had all gone over to Fox Way. It hadn’t been real Thanksgiving, for that Gansey had to be at a political brunch with his family, but that Friday they had all gathered around the Fox Way big circular table. Adam had always liked the environment of Fox Way, mixed matched China and easy overlap of bodies and speech. It had felt like a real home, something that Adam had never really been a part of. 

They had eaten tofurkey and canned cranberries and cream and raw kale and a strange yogurt concoction that Adam wasn’t sure was even edible, but had been Blue’s contribution to the table and so Gansey had declared it was the best part and forced down several mouthfuls as the rest of the table howled. Adam missed it so much he could barely stand to think of it.

 

.

 

Adam found Blue leaning against the side of the student center, glaring fiercely at passerbys, her eyes covered in some sort of dark sparkly makeup, and her outfit distinctly un-Harvardish, three or four mesh tops, a too large cardigan, a long sequined black skirt, and a huge pair of boots. Adam hadn’t realized how much he missed her. Unexpectedly, looking just as out of place and angry beside her, was Ronan. 

Both of them stood up when they caught sight of him, Blue running forward and hugging him. She smelled like incense and citrus and felt smaller than he’d remembered in his arms.

“Hey,” she said, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek and then rocking back on her heels. 

“Hi,” he said. “Hey,” he said, to Ronan this time.

The other boy had a bruise staining the bottom of his jaw and his hair had grown out, a curly mess on top of his head. 

“Hey,” he said. 

“So are we doing this?” Blue asked, looking, almost anxiously, between them. “Let’s go grocery shopping.”

“As long as it’s not tofurkey,” Ronan said. “That shit is disgusting.” 

 

.

 

Walking through the grocery store closest to campus with Blue and Ronan was completely surreal, as if no time had passed, as if Gansey was still waiting back at Monmouth and they’d be back soon with a bag of snacks that Adam would have argued against getting, but would have forced Ronan to let him split the cost of. It made Adam’s chest hurt.

When they reached the top of the frozen food aisle, they turned and almost ran smack into Henry.

“Henry?” Blue cried.

“Blueberry? Omg, girl, what are you doing here?” Henry asked, wrapping his arms tightly around Blue. The two of them were an interesting blend of bright colors and darkness. 

“We’re doing Thanksgiving,” Blue said, glancing over at Adam. “What are you still doing here? I thought you’d be going home.”

“Umm nah,” Henry said, scratching the back of his head. Adam didn’t think he’d actually seen him since  _ that _ day. The rush of seeing him again was more intense than he had imagined it would be. “My parents decided to go back to China on business this week, they don’t really feel the significance of Thanksgiving, so I’m just staying here.”

“Well, come with us,” Blue said.

“Really?” Henry asked. Adam thought, then, that it would probably be better if he actually shared things with people. This would have been so much easier if he had just said to Blue before,  _ hey, so I slept with Henry Cheng and if we see him, don’t invite him to eat Thanksgiving dinner with us.  _ But he hadn’t.

“Yeah, definitely!” Blue said. “I mean we’re doing frozen pizza instead of turkey because some people won’t eat my tofurkey--”

“Damn straight,” Ronan said. He’d remained conspicuously quiet throughout most of the day, glancing at Adam periodically with soft eyes. Adam didn’t quite know what to say to him.

Henry looked directly at Adam for the first time in the conversation. “Okay,” he said, almost a challenge. “I’m in.”

 

.

 

The dorms were mostly empty as most of the people went home for Thanksgiving or disappeared once the dining halls were closed, so they had the run of this floor’s common room, Blue sprawled across one of the scratchy couches with her feet in Henry’s lap, eating pizza from the plate on her stomach, and waving at the tv emphatically with her free hand (“I love rich people,” she’d declared when she’d seen the huge flat screen in the common room that Zach Myers had set up at the beginning of the year, because he’d had “an extra”, it still made Adam feel a little ill whenever he saw it), Ronan was seated on the floor, pulling at the carpet and shredding the pieces with his long fingers. Adam went and sat next to him.

“How are you?” he asked. 

Ronan looked up. “Do you care now?” he asked. 

“I always cared,” Adam said. “I just--” He thought about the way Gansey had looked when the knife had entered his body, the surprise. 

“Yeah,” Ronan said. “Yeah, I know.”

There was a pile of tuft from the carpet by Ronan’s left foot.

“I miss him too,” Ronan said. “He was my first friend, a real friend.”

“Yeah, me too,” Adam said.

Ronan leaned into him, resting his head on Adam’s shoulder and Adam let him. His curls tickled Adam’s jaw and after a moment he smoothed them down. Adam could feel Henry’s eyes on them, heavy and too knowing. Adam thought that maybe Ronan was crying, but when he lifted his head, his eyes were dry, but deeply sad. 

“He’d forgive you,” he said, finally. 

“What?” Adam said.

“I just realized I’d never said that to you. But Gansey would forgive you.” 

Adam was aware, intensely, of Henry’s presence.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“Well, you’d be wrong,” Ronan replied. 

 

.

 

Henry cornered him in the hallway as Adam was going to use the bathroom. 

“Look,” he said. “So I’m getting this idea that maybe something like actually traumatic has happened to you, like apart from the Gansey thing. And like Blue’s not going to tell me, but I’d like it if you would.”

“Henry,” Adam said. “I can’t.”

“Okay,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Okay, just you know how I feel about you Parrish, and I get that you can’t date or you won’t date, because of this ingrained homophobia thing--”

“It’s not ingrained homophobia,” Adam said.

“Umm, yes it is,” Henry said. “And that’s not the point. The point is, you’re sad and I like you, and I think, even if you won’t admit it, you like me too. So let me be there for you. It won’t be this way forever.”

Adam thought that it sort of felt like it would. He didn’t know if he could ever wash away what he’d done. But he really, really wanted to.

“Okay,” he said. 

“Okay?” Henry said.

“Yeah,” Adam said. “Okay.”

  
  
  
  



End file.
